Israel Matzav

America's adolescent President

Most of my readers either have been or currently are adolescents. As you therefore all know, adolescence is a period when we push our limits to break out of the nests in which we were raised. Often, that involves rebelling against our parents in some way or other, and doing things differently to demonstrate our independence. Often, adolescents will continue to rebel, even when that rebellion is shown to be totally irrational. I'm going to do it my way just to show that I'm different from my parents.

Barack Hussein Obama apparently believes that George W. Bush is his father. As such, Obama is busy showing the World how he can do things differently than Bush did them.

Back in July 2007, Obama said that he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and other tyrants without preconditions. Grown-up squares like George W. Bush wouldn’t talk to these guys, so as the avatar of the generation of hope and change, Obama would. Obama figured he was cool enough to get the mullahs to agree to renounce nuclear weapons and all that hate stuff.

Obama has held to this ever since. Before June 12 he said he would give the Iranian leaders till the end of the year to be enchanted. When millions of Iranians started demonstrating in the streets, denouncing the obvious election fraud and in some cases calling for an end to the regime, his initial responses verged on stony indifference.

He expressed “deep concern” but said he didn’t want to “meddle.” He issued a statement on June 20 calling on the Iranian government “to stop all violent and unjust actions.” Finally, in a hastily called news conference Tuesday he for the first time uttered the verb “condemn” and said he was moved by the video of YouTube martyr Neda Soltan being shot down by the mullahs’ gunmen.

But he clearly hasn’t abandoned his policy of seeking the good opinion of tyrants. He didn’t even rescind the State Department’s invitations of Iranian diplomats to attend U.S. embassy Fourth of July celebrations (halal hot dogs, anyone?). If Bush refused to entertain the emissaries of the Iranian theocrats, it must be right to do the opposite. But even anonymous State Department officials are saying that the chances are dismal for fruitful negotiations with Ahmedinejad or the tyrant Obama insists on calling “the supreme leader” by Obama’s deadline —something that seemed obvious to me and many others well before June 12. A regime of tyrants dedicated to hatred of America, Britain and Israel is not going to be persuaded to abandon a central goal by even the most dazzling display of adolescent charm.

Read the whole thing.

Here's hoping Barack Obama grows up soon. But reading this article by Michael Barone, it struck me that Barone's examples would better have been drawn from the domestic sphere. I have a much easier time attributing things like Porkulus to adolescence. Obama's actions on things like Iran and missile defense (the other example Barone gives) seem to be based on mature but misguided beliefs that all governments and systems of government are equal - except for those that consist of a Jewish state.

On the other hand, Obama may not grow out of socialism (the Chrysler and GM takeovers and the current plan to nationalize health care) either.

By the way, the photoshop came from Slublog via Ace of Spades.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:03 PM